Exhibitions in Paris

Louvre

Over 300 photographs tracing the Louvre's own history, from the invention of photography to today, showing the museum as subject, model and source of inspiration.

Musée des Arts et Métiers

A capsule show in which some thirty Cnam and CNRS researchers pick everyday work objects, from office chair to badge and post-it, illustrated by Romain Joly, to show how work is changing.

Musée d'Orsay

A "Bicentennial of Photography" retrospective on Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884), the painter-turned-photographer and technical innovator, featuring newly surfaced acquisitions shown for the first time.

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

Artist Romeo Mivekannin uses mirror effects and metal sculptures to examine the history of colonial exhibitions and human zoos, reinterpreting historical ethnographic photographs from the museum's collection.

Centre Pompidou

About a hundred works by some thirty artists from the Centre Pompidou's photography collection, shown at the Grand Palais during Paris Photo 2026 for the bicentenary of photography.

Musée de l'Armée (Les Invalides)

Charles de Gaulle's early military and literary career, 1909 to 1940, before his famous June 1940 appeal, told through letters, manuscripts, photographs and personal objects.

Centre Pompidou

Marking the 50th anniversary of the Fondation Vasarely, this show explores Victor Vasarely's architectural vision through his "Centre Architectonique" building and related projects merging art and architecture.

Centre Pompidou · Free

Maritime imagery in 20th- and 21st-century art through works by Robert Delaunay, Man Ray, Peter Doig and others, exploring the sea as an enduring source of artistic inspiration. At Abbaye Saint-Germain, Auxerre.

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

From the forests of New Guinea to the paintings of Northern School masters, a journey tracing five centuries of fascination with birds of paradise.

Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries Lafayette · Free

The Californian artist presents "Snowman," a bronze sculpture inspired by cardboard tubes, and "Time Life Volume 15," a stop-motion film built from thousands of book images, subverting the idea of a monument through everyday materials and collective memory.

Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP)

A MEP Studio show pairing an analogue photographic project shot in Brittany in 2025 with expired 1990s film stock, and a film made during a 2026 Albania residency, exploring memory, dissociation and disorientation tied to the artist's childhood on the Breton coast.

Musée de l'Armée (Les Invalides)

A season marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, with displays on key figures and Franco-American military ties, plus concerts, talks and film screenings.

Musée d'Orsay

A display in Room 33 of the 2024 gift of nearly 200 drawings by the Impressionist Marie Bracquemond and engraver Félix Bracquemond, focused on their decorative-arts designs.

Louvre

Around 50 Islamic artworks from the 9th to 17th centuries set among European decorative arts, revealing how Eastern techniques of light, colour and sculpture inspired Western craft.

Musée Gustave Moreau

To mark the bicentennial of Gustave Moreau's birth, the museum gives contemporary painter Ali Banisadr carte blanche, staging an intergenerational dialogue between his work and Moreau's Symbolist legacy.

Louvre

Contemporary artists Kader Attia and Elizabeth Peyton present the results of their two-year Louvre residencies, offering intersecting interpretations of the museum and its collections.

Centre Pompidou · Free

Inaugural show at Maison Pompidou (50 rue Rambuteau) on the Centre's now-iconic colour-coded palette, and the gold, blue and brown that nearly won, told through architecture documents, photos and design objects.

Musée des Arts et Métiers

A dozen-plus reproductions of 19th-century archive photos from the museum's collection, following the Statue of Liberty from the Gaget workshops to its Atlantic crossing.

Musée d'Orsay

An Orsay Lab display in Room 8 pairing collection works with a video made with adolescents in psychiatric care at Pitié-Salpêtrière, on mental health and emotion.

Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries Lafayette · Free

The Japanese painter's first major institutional solo show in France, around fifty drawings and large-scale paintings of landscapes inhabited by human and animal figures, with the sea as a recurring motif.

Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries Lafayette · Free

The artist's first French institutional show, pairing sculptures shaped by shells with works exploring decoration versus conceptual art, using photography, ornamental forms and advertising-derived bubble motifs to probe nature and artifice.

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (MAM) · Free

The German painter's first solo show in France: sixteen monumental, expressionistic canvases installed within the museum's permanent collection display, including previously unseen works.

Musée d'Orsay

Around 246 recently acquired sheets trace Maurice Denis's decades-long project to illustrate "The Imitation of Christ," shown alongside his paintings and other works on Christian and spiritual subjects.

Musée du Luxembourg

About 150 drawings, plus paintings, silkscreens, photographs and archives, trace Warhol's drawn work from a 1942 self-portrait to The Last Supper in 1986.

Jeu de Paume

The most significant Paris survey of Canadian artist Stan Douglas in over 30 years, spanning film, video, photography and installation that probe how history is constructed, represented and transmitted.

Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection

Nearly 450 photographs by Irving Penn, from the 1940s to the early 2000s, shown in a non-chronological installation spanning portraits, fashion, ethnographic reportage, nudes and still lifes in Gallery 2.

Musée des Arts et Métiers · Free

A monumental metallic horse sculpture from the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, installed on the museum's forecourt with free public access.

Louvre

Around one hundred pieces of precious French metalwork from the 16th to 20th centuries, donated by Michel Lacoste, showcasing the technical skill and refinement of French silversmiths.

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

Arts and culture of the Northwestern United States, exploring First Nations artistic traditions featuring mythical beings and spirit animals such as the Raven.

Musée d'Orsay

Marking the museum's 40th anniversary, this show revisits set designer Richard Peduzzi's original 1986 scenography for Orsay through his theatre and opera models, drawings and sculptures.

Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP)

A family-oriented show for young visitors, staged in dialogue with PENN & FASHION, exploring what everyday clothing — creases, stains, mends, signs of wear — reveals about the people who wore it, drawn from the MEP's collections.

Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP)

A chronological retrospective of Irving Penn's fashion photography from 1947 to 2008, spanning his Parisian haute couture images of the 1950s through collaborations with Issey Miyake, John Galliano and Chanel, drawn from the MEP and Nicola Erni collections.

Centre Pompidou

Some 180 works (70 by Cezanne) trace his profound influence on modern art from the 1880s to today, the 'father of us all' as Picasso put it. At the Grand Palais, co-produced with the Pompidou and Musee d'Orsay.

Grand Palais

Nearly 180 works tracing Cézanne's profound influence, from Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso to Mondrian, Joan Mitchell and Peter Doig, and the artists who claimed his legacy.

Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection

Marking photography's bicentenary, this major group show gathers around 700 works by more than 70 artists from Gustave Le Gray to today, anchored by a Barbara Kruger commission in the Rotunda.

Fondation Louis Vuitton

Saudi artist Mohammad Alfaraj's first solo show in a French institution, "I'd rather be a dragonfly than a lion" brings stop-motion videos, objects, photographs and drawings drawn from the oral traditions and landscape of the Al Ahsa oasis to Gallery 8.

Musée Jacquemart-André

The first comprehensive survey in France of the Venetian master Tintoretto, tracing his audacious compositions and dramatic light from the Renaissance to his influence on 19th-century French painting.

Musée de Cluny - musée national du Moyen Âge

The real Nicolas Flamel: not the immortal alchemist of legend but a 15th-century Parisian scribe, donor and property investor, traced through his tombstone and archives held at Cluny.

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (MAM)

First exhibition in France devoted to American painter Kerry James Marshall, around seventy works including eight new paintings, exploring Black representation and art history.

Musée d'Orsay

To mark the centennial of Claude Monet's death, a dedicated itinerary through the Impressionist Gallery (Rooms 29 to 35) celebrates his life and work.

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (MAM)

Major retrospective of Lebanese-American artist Simone Fattal, around one hundred works over fifty years, from early landscape paintings to ceramics and collages.

Musée de l'Orangerie

Marking the centenary of Monet's death, this exhibition traces how his painting engaged with time — from the Cathedrals, Haystacks and Poplars series of the 1890s through to the Water Lilies — drawing largely on the Musée d'Orsay and Musée Marmottan Monet collections.

Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection

American artist Barbara Kruger fills the Rotunda and Display Cases with filmed sequences, audio clips, and text-and-image lightbox installations exploring emotion, power, and desire.

Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection

Around fifty photographs from the Pinault Collection by photojournalist Raymond Depardon, drawn from his long-term documentary series "La France" on provincial landscapes and small towns, shown in Gallery 3.

Centre Pompidou

For Centre Pompidou-Metz's 15th birthday, hundreds of collection works (Breton's studio wall, Duchamp's chess table) and pieces by Cattelan riff on the idea of 'Sunday' across 27 thematic rooms.

Louvre

17th-century Spanish polychrome wooden religious sculptures, including a complete processional float by Gregorio Fernández with five life-size figures displayed at eye level.

Louvre

A major retrospective of the Spanish Golden Age painter Francisco de Zurbarán, spanning his monumental monastery commissions, portraits and still lifes alongside his influence on later French avant-garde artists.

Musée d'Orsay

Marking 250 years of American independence, this exhibition and an accompanying VR experience trace how sculptor Auguste Bartholdi conceived and built the Statue of Liberty.

Musée d'Orsay

An exclusive virtual reality experience running alongside the Bartholdi exhibition, covering almost 700 m² in the Museum's Amont Gallery to trace the Statue of Liberty's journey from Paris to New York.

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

A rare photographic collection from French Polynesia's earliest decade of photography, featuring works by naval officers Gustave Viaud and Paul Emile Miot.

Centre Pompidou

Around thirty artists from Kupka to Jumana Manna, drawn from the Centre Pompidou's collections, fill the Pantheon's nave with quiet, intimate and anonymous lives - a counterpoint to the monument's great men. Free entry, part of the Constellation programme.

Musée d'Orsay

Co-organised with London's National Gallery and Boston's MFA for Orsay's 40th anniversary, this retrospective of nearly 80 paintings, pastels and prints traces Mary Cassatt's career through her guiding principle of independence.

Centre Pompidou

At Centre Pompidou Malaga, a thematic journey through 20th- and 21st-century art from the Musee National d'Art Moderne collection, in six interconnected sections about how artists make us see differently.

Musée national Picasso-Paris

First Kurt Schwitters retrospective in France in over thirty years: 300+ works and documents, from Merz collages to the Ursonate, set beside his affinities with Picasso's assemblage.

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (MAM) · Free

The four 2026 nominees for France's leading contemporary art prize (Andrianomearisoa, Brognon Rollin, Henno, Ntjam) show work within the MAM's collections. Winner announced 22 October 2026.

Palais de Tokyo

A group exhibition of individual and collective artistic practices rooted in non-urban territories across France, including Limousin, the Cevennes and Corsica.

Palais de Tokyo

Sonia Gomes's textile-based sculptures draw on Afro-Brazilian heritage, transforming fabric and craft into vehicles of memory, care and resistance.

Palais de Tokyo

Valerie John explores indigo blue as material, memory and artistic gesture, with assemblages of paper, textiles and objects tracing cultural ties between Martinique and West Africa.

Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris

A retrospective marking the centenary of Jacques Villeglé, tracing his practice of collecting torn Parisian street posters and reworking them into art that documents the city's changing urban and cultural landscape.

Palais de Tokyo

French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri presents the film "La Sentinelle" and a new installation on military service and its psychological effects, following a soldier suspended between destiny and self-abandon.

Palais de Tokyo

Filmmaker Rose Lowder's fifty-year research into visual perception through nature observation, centred on her film "La Source de la Loire" (2019-2021) alongside twenty one-minute films shot on organic farms in southern France.

Musée de l'Orangerie

The museum's 17th Contemporary Counterpoint: Vija Celmins's precise studies of ocean, desert, sky and snow surfaces, made 1971-2000 in drawing, painting, printmaking and wood engraving, shown in the pronaos and contemporary gallery in dialogue with Monet's Water Lilies.

Musée d'Orsay

A museum-wide activation by American artist Jenny Holzer: LED installations, facade projections and carved stone benches drawing text from Orsay's 1848-1914 collection.

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

An installation by Yo-E Ryou in the music box of the Collections Plateau, unfolding through sound, breath and duration to explore resonance between bodies, water and memory.

Centre Pompidou

The BnF and Centre Pompidou combine their Louise Bourgeois holdings for the first time - some 200 drawings, prints and artist's books - in the artist's first Paris public-institution show since 2008. At the BnF Richelieu, Galerie Mansart.

Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama's first major French show, with nine associate artists, reactivating African independence-era utopias through monumental installations made from salvaged materials.

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Mostly unpublished photographs by Martine Franck of 1970s feminist movements, mainly in Paris: protests and the feminist press. Curated by Angèle Ferrere.

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Meiselas's 1978-79 Sandinista revolution photographs and how they took on a life of their own on objects and murals: 100+ works, documents and film clips, curated by Clément Chéroux.

Fondation Louis Vuitton

Rediscovery of Gustave Fayet (1865-1925), pioneering collector of van Gogh, Gauguin and Picasso and a prolific designer, drawing on loans from 64 institutions and 71 private collections.

Louvre

An exploration of ancient Mesopotamia's relationship with water, tracing early canals and aqueducts and the environmental consequences of humanity's first great hydraulic engineering.

Jeu de Paume · Free

An online commission in which Paolo Cirio investigates non-consensual AI-generated sexual imagery, turning 15,000 collected deepfakes into an anonymised visual database.

Musée des Arts et Métiers

An immersive look at how the Statue of Liberty was built in 1880s Paris, tracing the copper, iron and ingenuity, including Gustave Eiffel's internal frame, behind the Franco-American monument.

Grand Palais

Inaugural show of the new Palais des enfants: a playful, sensory journey where artworks and science experiments play with light to spark the curiosity and wonder of very young visitors.

Musée national Picasso-Paris

A site-specific installation by Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca in the chapel of the Hôtel Salé, where his "cubistoid" intersecting lines are painted directly onto the walls to form a new pictorial space.

Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris · Free

A free display in the 1977-to-today room on how Paris has changed since its first elected mayor, with recent acquisitions by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, JR and others.